Male Clients Disfavor Women Partners

Are women just lousy at business development? Or are their firms not giving them the opportunity to shine? Well, here's another factor to consider: Male clients still favor male partners, according to a recent survey.

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Women partners at major law firms ought to have more to show for their efforts by now. For about a decade, they’ve been knocking themselves out—attending seminars, getting coached, even taking up predominantly male activities such as golf—to gain an edge in business development.

Are women just lousy at business development? Or are their firms not giving them the opportunity to shine? Well, here’s another factor to consider: Male clients still favor male partners.

That’s essentially the finding by Acritas, an international legal marketing company. Based on interviews conducted in 2016 with over 2,000 senior in-house counsel at $50 million-plus revenue companies around the world, Acritas reports the following:

But male clients are a third less likely than female clients to choose female lead partners. (Male clients chose a female lead in 17 percent of cases, while female clients picked a female lead in 25 percent of matters.)

That difference in the way male and female clients allocate work to their outside counsel is significant, says Acritas CEO Lisa Hart Shepherd. Male clients are choosing women to lead their work at a rate that’s even below the national percentage of female equity partners (19 percent), she notes, while women in-house counsel are being much more proactive. “Women are trying to throw business to women, since the 25 percent rate is above the availability figure.”

So for all the talk by general counsel and other senior in-house lawyers about how much they’re pushing for more gender equality (and diversity) from their outside counsel, clients—at least male ones—are essentially doing squat to improve the situation. In fact, cronyism still rules.

None of this is surprising to women in law firms. “People give business to friends,” says a former Big Law woman partner. “So, if a client is male—as most clients are—he will often give business to his frat brothers, law school roommates, golf partners, fellow club members, etc.” The only “fix,” she adds, “is to have women rise to more positions of power as clients.” (Women make up about 23 percent of chief legal officers in corporations, reports Acritas.)

Acritas’ Shepherd isn’t so keen on waiting. She proposes a more radical solution: Quotas.

“People don’t realize that they have this bias, and quotas would solve that problem,” explains Shepherd. “The quota should be targeted at a level to help female partners.”

She proposes that both male and female clients mandate that one-third of the lead partners they hire be women. “This will start to balance the power and increase the chances of equity for women,” she adds.

Sounds perfectly reasonable, but is Corporate American ready for quotas?

“The brave clients will do this,” says Shepherd. “If clients use the power they have, the firms will listen.”

Let’s repeat Shepherd’s words: “The brave clients will do this.”

In other words, the chances are nil.

Vivia Chen

Vivia Chen is a senior columnist at The American Lawyer and the creator of The Careerist blog.

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